Video Feed: Meet a Tamale Lady

Gapers Block (which did a fine story on tamale sellers on the bar scene several years ago) points us to a poignant video on the subject by Carlos Martinez. It’s centered on an interview with Marciala, a tamale lady who sells them near California and Milwaukee; the life she describes is undeniably hard and hardly seems much above the peasant life she left behind in Mexico… though it is also only possible in America with the aid of a van and a cell phone, which presumably would have been unaffordable in Mexico. In any case, it’s a moving depiction of how an immigrant with few other skills gets by in Chicago, and the under-5 minute video will leave you wishing for more about the lives of these sellers.